Dear Weekend Jolter,
Fourteen days to slow the war.
The world is now in the middle of a tenuous “cease-fire” in the Middle East. Peace talks are slated for this weekend in Pakistan, with Vice President Vance leading the U.S. delegation, and whether this phase brings about the end of the Iran war or opens a new chapter in it hinges in large part on what happens there.
“A lot, arguably the entire future of the Middle East, depends upon what the Iranians and U.S. actually agree upon in the coming two weeks, and what promises, if any, the Iranians actually keep,” Jim Geraghty writes. As NR’s editorial notes, the U.S. and Iran are worlds apart with their negotiating demands. Iran, unsurprisingly, already is not holding up its end of the bargain, and President Trump, unsurprisingly, is warning of renewed hostilities.
As ever, much is open to interpretation in Trump’s announcement of a two-week pause following his unhinged social media posts threatening civilizational destruction. Was this the “Mother of All Taco Tuesdays,” as Jim warns it could be if Trump agrees to Iran’s list of demands? Or can it lay the groundwork for a satisfactory end?
Noah Rothman provides the optimist’s take, writing that it’s safe to assume the U.S. will not agree to terms sought by Iran such as the acceptance of its nuclear enrichment program, full sanctions relief, and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East:
There is much to be settled at the negotiating table, and a resumption of hostilities is far from out of the question. And yet, it wasn’t Washington that sacrificed its leverage over Iran. Its forces in the region have not been withdrawn and the will to use them persists. Rather, it was Iran that put its last point of leverage over the West — its limited closure of the strait — up for negotiation. Its “toll booth” strategy is fanciful. The regime sacrificed whatever remained of its domestic legitimacy in the slaughter of its civilians in January, and it will confront another uprising at some point.
Luther Ray Abel advises: “Breathe . . . let the U.S. military do its thing.”
Dan McLaughlin is decidedly less sanguine:
The cease-fire in Iran, which seems likely to be the end of the war for all practical purposes, fails my simple test for victory: There is not a visible win here that the average American citizen can see without the need for mediating explanations from intelligence assessments. As I’ve said from the beginning, this war was worth fighting — if and only if it brought a permanent end to the Islamic Republic government that was founded in 1979 and has been effectively at war with us ever since. That would be a grand-strategic victory in taking Iran permanently off the board as a weapon against us. Instead, we’re stopping now; they’re just pausing.
Dan writes that, in Iran and Venezuela, the Trump theory of war seems to be “nation probation,” amounting, in his eyes, to “a recipe for forever war.”
The reality as of publication time, of course, is that there’s good news and bad news. Perhaps you’d like to hear the bad news first, but in a good way. If so, imagine Jim chortling while listing the following:
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The regime of the mullahs is still in power.
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The Iranian mullahs have established a geopolitical victory by demonstrating they can take the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf hostage, whenever they want, and they only need drones, missiles, and mines to do it. . . .
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Granting just about anything on the list of Iranian demands would represent a catastrophic geopolitical defeat for the United States, and the president seems bizarrely eager to acquiesce to an Iranian toll to pass through the Strait of Hormuz if he gets a cut.
As for the good, Jim and the editorial also note: The U.S. and Israel established air superiority over Iran and conducted thousands of sorties obliterating an array of targets, constituting a victory in military terms; the upper echelons of Iran’s leadership have been wiped out; the pause should calm the energy markets; and Iran’s list of enemies is longer now, and its influence further weakened.
Personally, I have a difficult time getting past how maniacal the American president sounds in wartime. By now, every political commentator in both hemispheres has weighed in on Trump’s threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” There’s not much to add, other than that Trump is taking madman theory to its outermost limits.
There is certainly something Nixonian about it. With light edits to names and places, a pre-pause report this week in Axios could have been a dispatch straight out of the Cold War, as sources warned Trump “might be the most hawkish person in the top echelons of his administration on Iran” and “is the most bloodthirsty, like a mad dog,” so much so that he makes Secretaries Hegseth and Rubio “sound like the doves.” One could almost hear echoes of H. R. Haldeman recalling how Richard Nixon wanted the North Vietnamese to think he might do anything: “We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry.’”
But it’s one thing to keep your adversaries guessing, another to make Americans wonder how much is really an act. As Andy McCarthy also writes: Madman theory “doesn’t work against other madmen.”
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And . . . consider this my weekly thank you — and nudge — concerning our ongoing spring webathon. For the very many of you who have already contributed to the cause, we appreciate you, profoundly. To those who are thinking about it, here’s that link again (we appreciate you too). Please, chip in if you can. And read on.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On government downsizing: A First Step Toward Shrinking Government
A periodic reminder that space is awesome: From the Earth to the Moon, and Back Again
An anniversary not worth celebrating: ‘Liberation Day’ at One Year
ARTICLES
Noah Rothman: Mamdani Hopes Racial Agitation Succeeds Where ‘Affordability’ Has Failed
Noah Rothman: A Rescue Mission for the Ages
Luther Ray Abel: Why So Grim About Iran?
Jeffrey Blehar: Whatever This Is in Iran, It Isn’t Victory
Abigail Anthony & Malia Marks: Washington State Is Giving a Leg Up to Minority-Owned Businesses Through Legally Suspect Programs
Kamden Mulder: Catholic Church Sees Massive Spike in Converts over Easter
Rebeccah Heinrichs: John Mearsheimer Has a Problem with Reality
Michael Brendan Dougherty: How the Upper-Middle Class Was Made
Michael Brendan Dougherty: For One Day, the World Revolves Around Hungary
Audrey Fahlberg: RNC on the Verge of ‘Biggest Election Integrity Win’ Ever, Chairman Predicts
Christian Schneider: Did a Human Write This Column?
Caroline Downey: Jennifer Newsom Represents Everything Wrong with Democrats’ Outreach to Young Men
Daniel Buck: The Department of Education Celebrates America, and the Left Hates It
Andy Smarick: Sasse, Zinsmeister, and Republican Virtue
CAPITAL MATTERS
Bob Goodlatte warns about a looming threat to discounts: Government Comes After Costco, Walmart, and Sam’s Club’s Business Model
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen looks into the early life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright: It Starts in Chicago: Where to See Frank Lloyd Wright’s Genius Unfold
Armond White praises the moral compass of Beyond the Gates: Beyond Character: A Political Soap Opera
THESE EXCERPTS DON’T RUN
Rebeccah Heinrichs takes on John Mearsheimer:
Now, in 2026, while the United States is at war with the world’s leading sponsor of Islamist terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mearsheimer is still at it. Just a few weeks ago, as Tucker Carlson was crashing out against President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran to stop its reign of terror and illegal nuclear weapons pursuits, Mearsheimer made this public statement, through off-putting smirks: “There is no country on the planet that is crueler and more deadly than Israel.”
This is quite the charge by a man who was once taken seriously for articulating his theory of “offensive realism” in international relations — an offshoot of the work of Hans Morgenthau. Today, he’s mostly famous for being wrong on basic, easily knowable facts and also for chronically engaging in logical fallacies that seem to always lead to the conclusion that America is to blame for our enemies’ bad behavior. (Maybe the most interesting thing about Mearsheimer’s journey is that the truly remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States is one of the clearest examples that thoroughly undermines his theory about international relations.)
Mearsheimer has argued that realism requires serious students of strategy to view nations as caring primarily about power and security, not ideology or their systems of government. He glosses over the idiosyncratic strategic cultures within societies, insisting that China, for example, whether led by Ronald Reagan or Xi Jinping, would essentially behave the way it is behaving today, which Mearsheimer asserts is in China’s national interests. To Mearsheimer, allies are not really motivated by domestic political matters or values; they are dangerous millstones around the necks of great powers. Ditching them frees up countries such as China to behave as they want.
Mearsheimer has been right and even insightful about the danger of liberal idealism — the belief that there can be supranational motives or organizations that subsume the desire of nations to protect their sovereignty and defend their survival. But his brand of realism has also led him to confusion and error.
MBD previews this weekend’s Hungarian election:
The ruling party Fidesz, led by Viktor Orbán, has won four consecutive four-year terms. Knowing only that, no one would be surprised if voters had tired of them and tried the opposition. Hungary deserves a normal election.
But it will not get one this Sunday. The polls are all over the place. Those funded by the European Union and die-hard enemies of the current government show absurdly large leads for the opposition, sometimes by as much as 20 points. Those funded by the government’s media in Hungary show the incumbent party with a healthy lead of anything from six to ten points.
Self-appointed guardians of the “liberal world order” have already declared that Orbán’s party will lose this election legitimately, or it will win it by illegitimate means or somehow declare an emergency and try to annul the result. Some have fantasized about bringing Orbán out and publicly executing him like Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. Others invoke the idea of staging something like the Ukrainian Maidan revolution in Budapest if he prevails.
I noticed years ago this pattern at work. Because the Hungarian language is difficult, and knowledge of Hungarian politics and history is pretty sparse in Western media, supposedly respectable people feel at liberty to say insane things about Hungary, and even if those things prove to be ludicrously untrue, they still get to write major feature articles as if they are experts on the topic. When the Orbán government responded to Covid by declaring a state of emergency, Anne Applebaum declared it the first European dictatorship and spread rumors that the parliament had been suspended and elections canceled. This weekend’s will be the second election since that claim. The American Enterprise Institute’s Dalibor Rohac called it a “power grab without parallel” in modern European history. Hungary ended its state of emergency 82 days later, before France did. Orbán did arguably abuse his emergency powers during Covid. Not, as American political consultant Liz Mair predicted, by “putting Gypsies in permanent detention.” Instead he used the opportunity to refurbish a city park in Budapest, a project that had been blocked by a mayor from the opposition party. One person had been arrested under its speech restrictions, but not charged — unlike in the U.K., where hundreds of people have been convicted of criminal tweeting.
What’s so interesting is that there are almost two different election campaigns happening for Hungary at once. There is one in Hungary, in which the opposition leader Péter Magyar is a former member of Fidesz. His story is that he was tired of moral and financial corruption in the party. He is, however, running on Orbánism without Orbán. He opposes mass migration. Like Orbán, he tells the public constantly that he wants the war in Ukraine to end. Like Orbán, he opposes fast-tracking Ukraine’s membership into the EU. Like Orbán’s party, he voted against a 90 million euro loan to Ukraine.
Then there is another campaign against Orbán, run internationally, with all the scandal stories and the thinly sourced reporting about Russian interference.
Noah Rothman chronicles, and explains the significance of, the remarkable rescue operation in Iran:
The hit on a U.S. fighter jet and the ejection of its two crewmen significantly complicated the coalition’s ongoing combat operations. What followed, however, was one of the most impressive search-and-rescue operations in U.S. military history.
The U.S. dispatched an unspecified number of low-flying aircraft to hunt for the downed service personnel, some of which took fire. At least two Blackhawk helicopters were hit during the operation, although they managed to land safely. An A-10 Warthog crashed into the Persian Gulf after it was also hit, although its pilot was recovered.
Within hours of the crash, U.S. operators located the F-15E pilot, exfiltrating him from deep within Iranian territory with the aid of two military helicopters. But the aircraft’s weapons system officer — callsign “Dude 44” — was nowhere to be found.
The Iranians were certainly looking for him. When the news of the successful attack broke on Iranian state television, the anchor enlisted the support of “all tribespeople and villagers” to help capture the U.S. airman alive in exchange for a “precious prize.” As a hostage, “Dude 44” would provide the Iranians with additional leverage over Donald Trump. But the broadcast served as a tacit admission that the Iranians needed help finding their target, too.
The weapons service officer reportedly did his utmost to conceal his location. After landing, the unidentified airman scrambled to an elevated promontory, where he briefly activated his emergency beacon before retreating into a mountain crevasse, at which point his signal became spotty. But on Saturday morning, despite initial concern that the Iranians could be laying a trap for U.S. forces, the officer’s location and identity were confirmed. The president swiftly gave the go-ahead for a rescue operation. . . .
The Iranian effort to capture the downed officer was substantial, although it was frustrated by a CIA-led misinformation campaign. “As the aviator hid from Iranian forces, the agency spread false word inside the country that the U.S. military had already located the downed airman and was preparing to move him overland for exfiltration,” the Journal confirmed. U.S. air strikes on Iranian convoys and commandos on the ground managed to fend off Iranian forces long enough for the U.S. to recover its downed airman. After exfiltrating the serviceman, U.S. forces destroyed the two aircraft that were still stuck in the sand as well as two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters.
All told, the United States lost five aircraft beyond the first F-15E to the rescue mission, while others suffered significant but repairable damage. And yet, no U.S. lives were lost in either the search-and-rescue operation or the raid that brought it to a conclusion, even though U.S. forces were operating deep inside Iran just 30 miles outside the major city of Isfahan. Despite the proximity to a strategic Iranian metro area and the enlistment of Iran’s citizenry, the Islamic Republic’s forces failed to achieve their goal.
While the rescue is impressive, critics of this war may wonder what strategic benefits the U.S. could derive from this mission. Sure, it’s nice that we recovered our airmen, but we’re still down six manned aircraft, and the Iranians have demonstrated the capacity to neutralize U.S. air assets. What have we really achieved?
Over the weekend, former CENTCOM commander and retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie offered his own perspective on the “hard lesson for Iran” to which U.S. forces treated the Islamic Republic.
He speculated that the Iranian public’s failure to heed their leaders’ call may be “a sign of disaffection” among the people. He observed that U.S. forces executed an operation with peerless competence that no other military on earth could even contemplate. And, by way of perspective, he added that “it takes a year to build an aircraft” while “it takes 200 years to build a military tradition where you don’t leave anybody behind.”
CODA
I’ll admit I only know this song because it was on the soundtrack for the movie Garden State, a quirky rom-com from 20+ years ago that, as an N.J. native very much in the target demo, I saw in the theaters. But the song’s great: Here’s “In the Waiting Line” by Zero 7. Catchy, eh?
Thanks, again, for reading.
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